Planet Rugby

Today's other stories in brief

Big games clash

Possibly the two strongest schools teams in this year's Leinster Junior Cup, Belvedere College and Blackrock College were not best pleased to hear of the scheduling for their meeting early next year. The match has been fixed for the Sunday Ireland play Wales in Cardiff in the Six Nations Championship.

Those who enjoy supporting the old school tell us the Saturday before Ireland's game against Wales is free and would offer a simple solution to a potential conflict of interest for loyal supporters. Is that too simple?

While we are on the subject of schools rugby the word is that St Michael's College have lost their two senior team coaches as well as their junior team coach, although the tom-toms also tell us Mark McDermott and Greg McWilliam have stepped up to the plate to coach the senior team.

Pass to free up space

One of the things to come out of the oral hearing into the Lansdowne Road development held at the Gresham Hotel in Dublin all last week was how the notorious crush at the DART barriers at Lansdowne station during international match days is going to be eased

The Lansdowne Road Development Company plan to build a one-and-a-half-metre pass for pedestrians under the railway track.

The plan is also to have more points of entrance and egress around the new stadium, with colour-coded tickets to show which part of the ground fans should be going to.

In the commissioned report into transport, it was estimated 25,000 people use Lansdowne Road to go in and out of the ground on big-match days and 60 per cent of those attending games travel to the ground by car.

This, folks, will not be happening when the new stadium is completed.

Doors open to hurlers

The negative publicity associated with the town of Harryville in Ballymena has grabbed headlines for the wrong reasons in past years, but this year Ballymena Rugby Club have made an historic and positive move by opening their training facilities to none other than the Antrim hurlers.

Antrim coach Terence McNaughton described the training venue as "perfect for us" given that so many of the squad come from the northern end of the county.

Ballymena chairman Rab Brady spoke of his club's desire to "develop a good working relationship with the hurlers".

Good then to see Ballymena following in the footsteps of others such as Belfast Harlequins, who have also opened their doors to the local GAA club.

No commissioner in cite

The case of the former Leinster and Clontarf secondrow Ben Gissing appears to indicate that the smaller the club you play for the more likely you are to escape punishment for an offence.

Gissing, who now earns a crust in Italy, was accused of punching while playing for Calvisano against Ospreys in their Heineken European Cup match at Centro Sportivo on December 9th. But the match was not televised and had no citing commissioner.

The player was subsequently cited by the Ospreys and after a review of the alleged incident, the independent citing officer ruled Gissing should be subject to a disciplinary hearing.

So it looks like the matter will proceed in the old-fashioned way, with one word against another, character references provided, et cetera, et cetera.

Not quite as cut and dried as a slow-motion camera showing the moment of impact and the player from which the punch came.

But knowing Big Ben as we do, sure he'd never resort to something like that.

Retiring types

Jonny Bell, James Topping and Tyrone Howe all retired from professional competition at the end of last season and are enjoying life away from the cutting edge of the sport.

Bell, who was plagued by injury, is now injury free and is on the bench for Dungannon. He will be coaching at Campbell College after Christmas.

Topping, who won eight caps for Ireland, is a civil engineer, working nine-to-five as a site manager in Ballymena, and advises players to keep playing for as long as they can.

Howe, formerly a teacher in Marlborough College, England, now works as a consultant for MSL Search and Selection. Thanks to his masters degree from Oxford, he gets to advise on filling senior executive and board positions in big companies.